Referencing and your Bibliography.

Referencing will probably seem like a tedious and time-

consuming job that is not very important. It is though, for a number
of reasons:

1. It shows you have achieved one of the major assessment

criteria for your coursework. i.e. research.
2. It acknowledges the work by other people that you have
used to support your argument.
3. It helps the exam board check the accuracy of your quotes to
ensure you have understood what they mean.
4. It is preparation for university, where it is expected that you
reference all your assignments according to the conventions
set out below.
5. It is your defence against plagiarism or copying.

Harvard Referencing for a Media Assignment

Quotations

With long quotations you need to indent the whole text from both
sides, like this:

The 1940s film Brief Encounter, hyped as the romance of

the decade, was little more than government-funded
propaganda, in an attempt to put an end to the permissive
wartime years and set the scene for a more morally pure
1950s. (Schwarzkopf, 2003, p. 144).

You need to put the author’s name in brackets at the end of the
quote, with the date the author wrote the quotation, and the page
number if from a book.

• Shorter quotations might work like this:

As Schwarzkopf (2003, p.144) argues, ‘The film Brief Encounter

was a deeply moral film.’

Note that the title of the film is in italics.

Referencing and BibliographyMedia Studies @ IGS 1

• Cite from an edited sourcebook like this:

As Grenville-Price in Van Ling, M. (2002 p.42) says, ‘Flimsy is the

new filmy.’

• Cite from an Internet resource like this:

As Harrison (2001, online) argues ‘The horror genre has risen from
the grave.’

List Of References
Attached to the end of your assignment you need a full list of all
the sources you have used. It’s useful to make a list of these
sources as you go along. With books you need to note the author,
date of publication, title, edition, the place of publication, the name
of the publisher and the page numbers you read. For example:

Schwarzkopf, R. (2003). The Morality of Brief Encounter, Apple

Pie and Momma. London: Macdonald Media Inc, p. 144.

Take care to use the exact same style of punctuation.

• If your source has been a newspaper article, you should

reference it like this:

Macdonald, A. (2003). Film Studies gets seasick – jaundiced,

yellow and so not submarine. The Independent on Sunday. (30
November 2003)

• Of course it won’t only be books you quote from or use

as source material. Websites might be used:

Lappin, H. (2003). A Film Studies Guide: A Secret Army of War

Reporters. [Online] London Media Project, London. Available at:
http://www.londonmedia/secretwar/article.html [accessed 1 Dec
2008]

• You might have watched a film or a TV programme as

part of your source material. A film is referenced like this:

Referencing and BibliographyMedia Studies @ IGS 2

Brief Encounter. (1946). Film. Directed by David Lean. UK:
Cineguild.

• A TV programme is referenced like this:

The Office. (2002). TV. London: Channel 4.

With many media sources your order of reference is likely to be:

title. (Date). Media type. Director. Place: Company.

• To reference a source taken from an edited book you

present it like this:

Grenville-Price, S., (2002) ‘Flimsy, Filmy and Diaphanous – a post-

modern critique of the Nouvelle Vague’ in Van Ling, M. (ed) Film
Studies for Colleges. London: Macdonald Media Inc, p.42.

Bibliography

Following your list of references should be a bibliography. This is

a list of the texts that you consulted in your research and found
relevant, but are not actually referred to by name in your essay.

Referencing and BibliographyMedia Studies @ IGS 3